One of the most significant changes will be the requirement that all outgoing government payments include a payment categorization code.
Elon Musk said Saturday that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the U.S. Treasury Department have agreed on new anti-fraud measures aimed at preventing tens of billions of dollars in fraudulent government entitlement payments each year.
In a Feb. 8
statement shared on social media, Musk described the scale of the problem as “utterly insane,” citing estimates that at least $50 billion annually is being lost due to improper payments, including funds going to individuals without Social Security Numbers or even temporary ID numbers.
Musk, who leads DOGE and has been designated a “special government employee” by President Donald Trump, revealed in the post that Treasury officials estimated that $100 billion in annual entitlement payments may be going to individuals without verifiable identification.
In a discussion with Treasury personnel, Musk said he asked for an estimate of how much of that is “obvious and unequivocal” fraud, and the consensus was that at least half—$50 billion per year, or around $1 billion per week—is fraudulent.
“This is utterly insane and must be addressed immediately,” Musk wrote, adding that the DOGE team and Treasury have jointly agreed to a series of reforms.
One of the most significant changes will be the requirement that all outgoing government payments include a payment categorization code. According to Musk, these codes are essential for financial audits, yet they are frequently left blank, making it nearly impossible to track where taxpayer dollars are going.
Under the new rules, every payment will also need to include a rationale in the comment field. Currently, many government payments lack any explanation, making it difficult to assess their legitimacy, Musk said. While he emphasized that no judgment will be applied to these rationales at this stage, requiring at least some justification for payments is expected to serve as a deterrent against waste and fraud.
Another reform involves more effective implementation of Treasury’s Do-Not-Pay
list, which is meant to prevent payments to fraudulent entities, deceased individuals, suspected terrorist fronts, and other entities or people who should not be paid by federal agencies. Musk said that this list has not been strictly enforced, with some payments still being made to flagged entities. He also pointed out that it can take up to a year for names to be added to the list, calling for weekly or even daily updates to prevent ongoing fraud.
Musk said that the above “super obvious and necessary” changes will be implemented by existing, long-time career Treasury employees; not anyone from the DOGE. His remarks in this regard align with Treasury Department Scott Bessent’s
insistence that DOGE members have read-only access to Treasury data and that they have not been “tinkering” with sensitive payment systems at the department.
The development comes as DOGE
focuses its cost-cutting and efficiency-enhancing efforts at multiple federal agencies, including Treasury, as part of the Trump administration’s broader aim of reducing deficits and eliminating fraud, waste, and abuse from government.
Republicans have praised DOGE’s efforts to identify government waste, while Democrats have denounced the body’s actions as an abuse of power and its operations as skirting congressional oversight. There have been protests over DOGE by members of Congress, federal employee unions, and privacy advocates, along with a number of lawsuits targeting its activities. Recently, a judge
blocked DOGE’s access to the personal financial data of millions of Americans at the Treasury Department.
Bessent recently defended DOGE’s actions at Treasury. He said in an
interview with Bloomberg that the DOGE team is made up of highly trained professionals and “not some roving band running around doing things,” possibly in reference to claims by critics that DOGE has embraced and is applying the adage “move fast and break things,” which is part of the Silicon Valley start-up culture of being innovative, nimble, and disruptive.
“This is methodical and it’s going to yield big savings,” Bessent said of DOGE’s work at Treasury.
In a follow-up
post on Saturday, Musk said that the reason no action was taken under prior Treasury leadership to tackle the $50 billion or more in fraudulent government payments is complacency.
“Nobody in Treasury management cared enough before,” Musk wrote. “I do want to credit the working level people in Treasury who have wanted to do this for many years, but have been stopped by prior management. Everything at Treasury was geared towards complain minimization.”
The Epoch Times has reached out to the Treasury Department with a request for comment.
